1 . I was having a great morning until I sat down in front of my office computer. “Your password has expired(过期),” a server message flashed on my screen, with instructions for changing it.
Coming up with a new code doesn't seem like a big deal, unless you work at my company, where we have to change it monthly, using at least one uppercase character, one lowercase character, one symbol, and one numeral. Oh, and the whole damn thing can’t be fewer than eight characters. And I can't use any of the same passwords I’ve used in the past three months.
Suddenly I was furious. What didn’t make it any better was that I was deeply depressed after my recent divorce. Disbelief over what she had done to me was all I thought about. Every day.
My anger didn’t mean anything to the empty input field with a pulsating cursor (闪动的光标), waiting for me to type a password that I’d have to re-enter — many times — for the next 30 days. I remembered a tip I’d heard from my former boss. He’d said, “ I’m going to use a password to change my life.”
I couldn’t focus on getting things done in my current mood. There were clear indicators（指示信号） of what I needed to do to regain control of my life, but I couldn't notice them.
My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be a victim of my recent breakup and that I was strong enough to do something about it.
I made my password Forgive@h3r. I had to type this statement several times a day. Each time my computer would lock. Each time my screen saver with her photo would appear. Each time I would come back from eating lunch alone. In my mind, I wrote Forgive her every day.
The simple action changed the way I looked at my ex-wife. That constant reminder of reconciliation led me to accept the way things had happened at the end of my marriage and embrace a new way of dealing with my depression. As the month wore on, I felt a slow healing begin to take place. By the time my server prompted me to reset my password the following month, I felt free.
One month later, my dear Exchange server asked me yet again to reset my password. I thought about the next thing that I had to get done. My password became Quit@smoking4ever.
I quit smoking overnight. This password was a painful one to type during that month, but doing it helped me to yell at myself in my mind as I typed that statement. It motivated me to follow my monthly goal.
One month later, my password became Save4trip@thailand.
Guess where I went three months later: Thailand.
Seeing how these reminders helped to materialize my goals kept me motivated and excited. While it’s sometimes difficult to come up with your next goal, keeping at it brings great results.
Here is a simplified extract（摘录）of what some of my passwords have been in the past two years, so you get an idea of how my life has changed, thanks to this method:
Forgive@h3r To my ex-wife, who started it all.
Quit@smoking4ever It worked.
Save4trip@thailand It worked.
Sleep@before12 It worked.
Ask@her4date It worked. I fell in love again.
No@drinking2months It worked. I feel better.
Get@c4t! It worked. I have a beautiful cat.
Facetime2mom@sunday It worked. I talk with Mom every week.
And the one for last month: Save4@ring Yep. Life is gonna change again soon.
1. According to Author’s company, which password is suitable?| A．&2lategr5 | B．#Life24￥%f | C．@4Ever&jh | D．*keeping￥ |
| A．depressed | B．doubtful | C．nervous | D．angry |
| A．To protect his computer against hacker attacks |
| B．To inform people of the importance of forgiveness. |
| C．To follow his former boss’s order to change his life. |
| D．To help overcome what he had been through in divorce. |
2 . Many people do things we can't understand and that we would never do. Although there can be a number of different explanations for such behavior, one reason is a failure of empathy. And it seems that we're seeing increasing levels of this failure these days.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It is similar to but different from sympathy, which can mean sharing a certain feeling with someone-having the same feelings they do. According to Helen Riess, associate professor of psychiatry(精神病学)at Harvard Medical School, empathy plays an important role in our society's ability to function, promoting "a sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals".
Our neural(神经)networks are set up to interact with the neural networks of others in order to both be aware and understand their feelings and to tell them apart from our own, which enables humans to live with one another without constantly fighting or feeling taken over by someone else.
Research has shown that empathy is not simply inborn, but can actually be taught. For example, it appears that medical, raining can actually diminish empathy, but on the other hand, physicians can be taught to be more empathic to their patients. Interestingly, their increased empathy also increases patient satisfaction and cooperation with treatment recommendations, thus leading to better treatment outcomes.
It seems to me that these techniques could work with a lot of people besides physicians. These days, I find myself thinking that we should be teaching empathy in school. Perhaps if we start in the early grades and keep teaching it through high school, problems and inappropriate behavior would reduce.
Empathy doesn't require burying of our own feelings. In fact, true empathy is about using our feelings to understand the feelings of someone else. We might not know exactly how they feel, but we might use our feelings to help us know something of what they are feeling. This kind of understanding, according to Reiss, can cross bridges and promote positive social behavior. Maybe we could use a little more empathy in our world.
1. According to the text, how does empathy benefit us?| A．It develops our sympathy. | B．It strengthens our neural system. |
| C．It helps our society function better. | D．It increases our level of confidence. |
| A．Reduce. | B．Increase. | C．Stop. | D．Produce. |
| A．He will behave himself better. | B．He will improve his academic grades. |
| C．He will choose to bury his feelings. | D．tie will feel satisfied with the school. |
| A．Empathy Helps You Win Out | B．Empathy Can Be Learned |
| C．Sympathy, Feeling-sharing of Others | D．Learn to Be an Empathic Doctor |
3 . Smartphone Bans in School
Today's students all over the world are losing an hour a week of productivity due to their smartphone activity.
That is what two researchers from the London School of Economics are arguing with their new study that examined 130,000 students in 91 British schools that employed various smartphone-use policies. Then, they looked at how their respective students performed in 16-year-olds' national exams.
In what may not come as a surprise to some, researchers Richard Murphy and Louis-Philippe Beland found that as schools' phone policies evolved since 2001, with some choosing to completely ban smartphones, school test scores improved by an average of 6.4 percent. The increase in scores from underachieving students was even more significant as they saw their scores increase by an average of 14 percent.
“The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy," the researchers told CNN. "We found the effect of banning phones for these students was the same as an additional hour a week in school, or increasing the school year by five days."
Professor Murphy and Beland said their study does not mean that smartphones and other technology have no place in assisting learning.
“There are, however, potential drawbacks to new technologies," they told CNN, citing the temptation to text, play games or chat on social media. Therefore, smartphones will not be completely out of classrooms anytime soon. Smartphone ownership among young people and children has skyrocketed in the past few years. Pew Research and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University reported that as of 2013, 78 percent of teens aged 12 to 17 owned a cellphone, 47 percent of which were smartphones.
The use of smartphones in schools is a controversial topic. Parents want to be able to reach their children while teachers complain about the effect they have on classes.
In March, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ended a decade-long city-wide ban on smartphones in public schools and left them to make up their own rules.
But Murphy and Beland said the decision may not have a good result.
“Schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools. So by allowing phones in schools, New York may unintentionally increase the inequalities of outcomes.”
1. Which of the following is TRUE about the research?| A．It examined 130,000 underachieving students. |
| B．It proves that smartphones are no good for students' studies. |
| C．Smartphone ownership among teens aged 12 to 17 amounted to about 50 percent. |
| D．In schools with smartphone bans, scores of the underachieving students increased by 14%. |
| A．Improved. | B．Interested. | C．Assisted. | D．Affected. |
| A．lose about an hour every day |
| B．relatively lose five days for learning |
| C．increase their scores by an average of 6.4 percent |
| D．decrease their scores by an average of 14 percent |
| A．Smartphone bans in schools are beneficial. |
| B．Smartphones cause students many problems. |
| C．Some students use smartphones too much. |
| D．Heavy smartphone use can harm students' learning abilities. |
4 . The COVID-19 pandemic has spread far and wide. Because of this, countries around the world have carried out measures to help stop the virus in its tracks. As more people stay inside to stay safe, the outside world seems to have become much quieter. In fact, scientists have seen this change in their research.
Seismologists - scientists who study earthquakes - have heard a lot less seismic（地震的） noise recently.
Seismic noise is made from vibrations (continuous shaking movements) in the ground that are caused by things like ocean waves and human activity, such as construction work and traffic. This noise makes it difficult for scientists to pick up seismic activity that is made at the same frequency.
Thomas Lecocq, a scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, located in Brussels, was the first to notice this phenomenon. According to Lecocq, the amount of seismic noise in Brussels has been reduced by about 30 to 50 percent since mid-March. Interestingly enough, this is around the same time Belgium started its measures. Because of this reduction in background noise, scientists like Lecocq have been able to pick up on smaller earthquakes that some seismic stations - like the one in Brussels - wouldn’t have been able to before.
This phenomenon isn’t unique to Brussels, though. Once Lecocq shared his findings online, seismologists from all over the world echoed similar findings. Celeste Labedz, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, mentioned in a tweet that Los Angeles also experienced less background noise. “The drop is seriously wild,” she wrote.
Researchers from the UK, France and New Zealand also noted a decrease in background noise since measures were put in place.
These global efforts to contain the COVID-19 virus have helped to shed light on seismic activity that may have gone unnoticed. It also shows that people are listening to health officials and following lockdown rules. “From the seismological point of view, we can motivate people to say, ‘You feel like you’re alone at home, but we can tell you that everyone is home. Everyone is respecting the rules,’” Lecocq told CNN.
1. What did seismologists find out recently?| A．Reduced seismic vibration makes the Earth quieter. |
| B．More smaller earthquakes are more likely to happen. |
| C．Many seismic activities have been detected recently. |
| D．Seismic noise is caused by vibrations underground. |
| A．More seismic noise is being picked up. |
| B．More data on smaller earthquakes is being collected. |
| C．Scientists will shift their focus to smaller earthquakes. |
| D．Future big earthquakes must be more accurately predicted. |
| A．repeated | B．demanded | C．explored | D．questioned |
| A．The drop in seismic noise is unique to Europe. |
| B．Seismic noise is mainly caused by human activity. |
| C．Many seismologists wanted tighter restrictions for their research. |
| D．The phenomenon proved that people are practicing social lockdown rules. |
5 . Imagine this: you walk into work and the camera above the doors scans your face, opening them automatically without you lifting a finger. Oh, but you need to run to the chemist's at lunch. You walk up to a camera, and your prescription（药方）is deposited in front of you. After work, you look at your face in the mirror, and it reminds you to wear sun-cream the next day. Sounds pretty good, right?
Now imagine this: when you are walking down the street, a pair of policemen pull their guns and tell you to drop to the ground. After several days in jail, they let you know you were misidentified as a violent criminal on the loose. Regardless of your innocence, you're in the system. Now wherever you go, cameras that capture you will alert police to watch out for you. Even worse, as you enter stores, the facial recognition system lets the staff know a recently arrested individual has entered the building. Doesn't sound so good?
As fantastical as either of those pictures might seem, it's quite possible that this will be the future we're headed towards. The "benefits" of the technology are already being implemented by airlines, as seen by JetBlue Airways. Rather than scanning a boarding pass or handing over a passport, you simply stare into a camera and you're identified. This does save time and make processes the best possible, but it raises the question: do you have the right to your own face? Who is responsible for the protection of this information? Can I even remove my face from this database and just go the old-fashioned way?
We humans have the never-ending need to make things smoother, better and faster. This desire has helped drive the remarkable progress we have achieved as a society. However, it's time to take a step back and ask some necessary questions. We need to discuss whether we actually need the extensive use of facial recognition technology and how to ensure law enforcement (执行) doesn't abuse this technology. If we act now, I believe we can succeed in preventing technology companies from infiltrating（潜入）every aspect of our lives. If we don't, though, I fear the worst.
1. What does the underlined word "fantastical" probably mean?| A．Unreal. | B．Optimistic. | C．Reasonable. | D．Unbearable. |
| A．Inequality of rights. | B．Disorder of society. |
| C．Violation of privacy. | D．Denial of responsibility. |
| A．Improper enforcement of laws. | B．People's lack of awareness. |
| C．Ignorance of the technology. | D．Companies' pursuit of profit. |
| A．How do we live safely with facial recognition technology? |
| B．Are we prepared for the use of facial recognition technology? |
| C．What will the future be like without facial recognition technology? |
| D．Can we prevent the development of facial recognition technology? |
6 . How can we possibly cope with the large amount of information about virus spread, canceled plans and uncertainty about the future? Some people are buried in the fear, anxiety and sadness, checking news sites and social media constantly. Others try to be prevented from knowing it all and ignore the outside world.
There's a third option, though. Rather than fully getting involved in the negative or ignoring it, we can do our best to experience joy alongside everything else that is sad in the world. In fact, research that and others have conducted suggests that allowing the two different emotions to coexist may actually benefit us in the long run.
Dr. Jeff Larsen and his colleagues invented an expression known as the “coactivation model of mixed emotions”, and the basic idea is that we may be able to deal with, and learn from negative emotions like sadness if we experience them concurrently with positive emotions like joy at the same time. Here, positive emotions provide a psychological buffer (缓冲),making it easier for people to deal with the things they don't want to face.
The comedian Mitch Hedberg proposed ananalogythat captures this essence quite well, noting that it would be cool if you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach. Then they would get there, and the carrot would say, “It's cool, he's with me.” Applied to our emotional lives, we could do a better job in digesting,processing gaining insight into the negative events in our lives if we could do so alongside the positive.
Several years ago, my partner Jon Adler and I set out to test this exact idea. Specifically, we looked at sample of adult volunteers who signed up for weekly mental , health therapy sessions. Between each week, they reported the feelings they were having and also took a few questionnaires that were meant to assess their overall health. This design allowed us to examine how different emotional experiences would impact mental health in a longitudinal fashion, over the course of 12 weeks.
It's worth noting first that everyone seemed to improve a bit as the weeks marched on:therapy helps and so does time. More to the point, though, mixed emotions at one time point were positively associated with improvements in psychological well-being at the next time point. The more of a mixture of, say, happiness and sadness someone experienced today, the better feeling they'd experience next week.
However, when we looked at mixed emotions that were experienced in a given week, they weren't associated with improved mental health in that same week.
The true benefit from mixed emotions may not happen immediately, but rather, likely happen sometime in the future.
1. What does the author recommend people do with a flood of bad news?| A．Take no notice of it at all. |
| B．Make better plans to fight against it. |
| C．Take in all of the negative emotions. |
| D．Get involved in the negative and enjoy happiness as well. |
| A．Mixed emotions remain to be proved. |
| B．The negative emotion is easy to deal with. |
| C．The positive emotion makes it easier for people to succeed. |
| D．Mixed emotions allow people to handle the negative better. |
| A．Exhibition. | B．Promotion. | C．Similarity. | D．Requirement. |
| A．To measure the volunteers health on the whole. |
| B．To record what the volunteers are experiencing. |
| C．To treat the mental diseases of the adults. |
| D．To over turn the theory co activation model of mixed emotions. |
| A．Ignore bad news completely to make you cutoff from outside and feel happy. |
| B．Make your negative emotions less severe by focusing on positive ones. |
| C．Negative emotions will eventually benefit people in the long run. |
| D．Positive and negative emotions can not coexist at the same time. |
7 . “Do not tell anyone”. We often hear these words when someone tells us a secret. But keeping a secret is hard. We’re often tempted（引诱）to “spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.
According to the professor, Asim Shah, keeping a secret may well “become a burden”. This is because people often have an “eager and anxious urge（冲动）to share it with someone”. An earlier study, led by Anita, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted（托付）with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.
Secrets are so often getting out. Why do people share them at all? Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. “Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone, ”according to Shah.
He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out. But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.
Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position, Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret anymore.
1. Why does the author say keeping a secret may “become a burden”?| A．Because people are born not to be able to keep secrets. |
| B．Because when people have secrets, their bodies ache. |
| C．Because keeping secrets is certain to cause depression. |
| D．Because keeping secrets could probably be harmful to health. |
| A．2. | B．3. | C．4. | D．5. |
| A．To fall by accident. | B．To let out secrets on purpose. |
| C．To spread secrets to everyone around. | D．To give away secrets unintentionally. |
| A．Quiet people are more likely to keep the secrets to themselves. |
| B．Sharing secrets helps establish friendship or get over the, sense of guilt. |
| C．Putting yourself in others’ shoes helps realize the importance of keeping secrets. |
| D．A person who is asked to keep a secret will suffer from psychological problems only. |
8 . LAS VEGAS — It was different in the light of day.
There was no “pop, pop, pop” of gunfire, no screams. Just a quiet lot of cars abandoned by those, like Kassidy Owen, who escaped with their lives.
“It’s strange to hear the silence,” Owen said, “because all I remember was the noise.”
The 22-year-old was one of dozens of concertgoers who returned to the scene of the Route 91 Harvest festival on Wednesday morning to fetch the vehicles they left behind as they fled from a gunman raining down bullets from high above in the tower of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino across the street.
Survivors of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday needed their cars to move on with their lives -- to get back to work, to school, home. It was the first time they were returning to a scene that would forever change them, when joy and celebration and music turned into killing and horror.
Before they could move forward, they had to go back to the place where they thought they were going to die.
Owen had run to her car to hide and had tried to drive away, but she couldn’t. People were running, bodies dropped to the ground, and cars bottlenecked in the parking lot. During a brief pause after more than 10 minutes of gunfire, she worried the lights of her SUV made everyone inside a shining target.
“They’re shooting again!” her best friend’s brother screamed. “Turn off the car!”
That’s when she got out and fled.
“I just remember shutting the door and running,” Owen said.
Now, nearly three days later, she was back, sitting in the driver’s seat of her SUV. Her eyes were swollen and red. This was a long way from over.
“You just keep hearing the gunshots in your head,” Owen said.
1. Why did Kassidy Owen return to the scene of terror?| A．To get back her car for daily life. | B．To show sympathy to the victims. |
| C．To search for her missing friends. | D．To look into the cause of the shooting. |
| A．abandoned | B．jammed |
| C．stopped | D．left |
| A．Because she had escaped being caught. |
| B．Because she wanted to find the gunman. |
| C．Because she couldn’t rid herself of those terrible scenes. |
| D．Because she had saved others’ lives by turning off the car. |
| A．Going back to where they would die | B．Owen’s experience in Las Vegas |
| C．How to survive in a mass shooting | D．Return to the unforgettable scene |
9 . Amazon’s chief executive officer, Jeff Bezos, refused to address employees’ demands that the company take action on the climate crisis at its annual shareholder meeting.
About 50 members of the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice attended the event, representing 7,700 staffers who signed a letter publicly urging Amazon to change its climate policy. Employees put forth a proposal (提议) at the meeting requesting a public report on climate change from Amazon’s board (董事会) of directors. The board suggested shareholders vote against it, and it was not passed.
After the proposal failed to pass, employees attempted to meet Jeff Bezos, who refused to meet with them.
“Jeff remained off-stage, ignored the employees and would not speak to them. Jeff’s inaction and lack of meaningful response indicated his dismissal of the climate crisis,” the group said in a statement after the event.
At a press conference following the shareholder meeting, the employees suggested Amazon should put forth a timeline for reaching a zero emission (排放) goal.
“Amazon has the scale and resources to spark the world’s imagination and lead the way on addressing the climate crisis. What we’re missing is the leadership from the very top of the company,” said Jamie Kowalski, a software engineer who co-filed the resolution and attended the shareholder meeting.
The proposal noted that other tech giants have released reports on their contributions to climate change and have committed to addressing concerns. Microsoft has been carbon neutral (碳中和), meaning it balances its carbon emissions with carbon removal. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007.
A spokesman from Amazon confirmed that none of the shareholder proposals outlined ahead of the vote were passed, including the request for a report on climate change. The employee group said in the press conference that the board’s standpoint on the proposal made it difficult to pass. They said they would continue to pressure Amazon.
1. Why wasn’t the proposal from employees passed?| A．The board wasn’t in favour of it. |
| B．They didn’t provide all the details. |
| C．Some workers didn’t sign their names. |
| D．They didn’t seek Jeff Bezos’ approval first. |
| A．Having curiosity. | B．Having confidence. |
| C．Lack of attention. | D．Lack of experience. |
| A．Confused. | B．Unconcerned. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．To show other companies have taken action. |
| B．To show Amazon will follow other companies. |
| C．To show all companies are facing great pressure. |
| D．To show big companies care less about the environment. |
10 . Between adolescence and adulthood, you go through a host of changes-jobs, unpleasant haircuts and relationships that come and go. But what about who you really are? As you grow older,does your personality change?
Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behavior unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed. But according to psychologists, that's not how it works. “Personality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not just something that you're stuck with and can't get over,” said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign.
That's not to say that you're a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be nearly imperceptible, Roberts told Live Science. Regular surveys on the personalities of participants over many years suggest that our personality is actually stable on shorter time scales.
We come into the world with unique temperaments （性情），and research suggests that our temperaments as children-for example, whether we're easy-going or unwilling to approach strangers-correspond to adult personalities.
Throughout the years, our personality is still changing, but slowly, Roberts said. “It's subtle. You don't notice it on that five-to-ten-year time scale, but in the long term, it becomes apparent, ” he added. Psychologists also pointed out that personality tends to get “better” over time. They call it “the maturity （成熟） principle. ” People become more outgoing, emotionally stable and agreeable as they grow older. Over the long run, these changes are often apparent.
Some individuals might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle applies to everyone. That makes personality change even harder to recognize in ourselves-how your personality compares with that of your peers doesn't change as much as our overall change in personality, because everyone else is changing right along with you. “There's good evidence that the average self-control of a 30- year-old is higher than a 20-year-old, "Donnellan said. ” At the same time, people who are relatively self- controlled at 18 also tend to be relatively self-controlled at age 30. "
1. Which of the following can be learnt from the passage?| A．People's personality usually remains unchanged in the long run. |
| B．People tend to be better balanced emotionally when they get older. |
| C．People experience apparent changes in personality every five to ten years. |
| D．People's temperaments as children have little to do with adult personalities. |
| A．Unnoticeable. |
| B．Unchangeable. |
| C．Impossible. |
| D．Incredible. |
| A．Kids and Teens |
| B．Fitness and Health |
| C．World Culture |
| D．Scientific American |
